Iowans will soon see a lot of ads supporting Mitt Romney, thanks to a “Super PAC” supporting his presidential candidacy.

The ads are sponsored by “Restore Our Future,” which said this morning that it will spend $3.1 million on TV and radio ads in Iowa in the next three weeks.

An Iowa expert described the move as a “massive buy.” Brian Dumas, president of the political consulting company Victory Enterprises, said the money should mean that Iowans will repeatedly see and hear several different ads supporting Romney.

Dumas, whose company worked for the recently departed candidate Herman Cain, said the Restore Our Future spending is the largest he’s seen in Iowa this year. He said it suggests that Romney backers fear he will trail Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul and maybe somebody else in the Jan. 3 caucuses. “It’s the kind of ad buy you’d buy if you’re worried about your candidate finishing worse than third,” he said.

The group’s first TV ad mocks President Obama’s ability to handle the economy and lauds Romney’s abilities.

“How many jobs did Barack Obama create as a community organizer? As a law professor? Maybe now you see the problem,” the ad says. “Mitt Romney turned around dozens of American companies and helped create thousands of jobs. He rescued an Olympics hit by scandal, took over a state facing huge deficits, and he turned it around without raising taxes – vetoing hundreds of bills. And Mitt has a detailed plan to turn around America’s economy.”

Under a picture of a smiling Romney, the ad notes that it is not authorized by any candidate. The group, whose leaders include several Romney allies, is allowed under a Supreme Court ruling that opened the way to super PACS. Such groups may spend limitless money supporting or opposing candidates, but may not coordinate their efforts with the campaigns’.

A spokeswoman for the group declined comment on Dumas’ speculation that the spending indicates Romney’s allies lack confidence in his Iowa standing. She said this was the first time the group had purchased Iowa air time.

Iowa State University political science professor Dianne Bystrom disagreed with the notion that the new ad campaign suggests a sudden lack of confidence in the Romney camp. “My guess is they planned this all along,” she said.

Bystrom noted that Romney has made fewer trips to Iowa than most of his rivals, and she said a sudden rush of ads in the next few weeks could help him try to overcome his relative lack of contact with voters here.

Bystrom said the average voter sees little difference between candidates’ ads and those run by PACs backing them. In fact, she said, a candidate probably would be better off having a PAC take care of attack ads against opponents. “That really has less of a potential for blowback on the candidate,” she said, adding that the first pro-Romney ad has no such potential because it doesn’t aim at GOP rivals.

For perspective on the scope of the $3.1 million ad campaign, consider this: In the 2008 Iowa campaign, all the GOP candidates combined spent just $1.5 million on ads run on Des Moines’ two leading TV stations, according to “The Iowa Precinct Caucuses” by Hugh Winebrenner and Dennis Goldford.

“Before he was a politician, Mitt Romney was a corporate buyout specialist, eliminating jobs and bankrupting companies while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, in the final days of the Iowa caucuses, his allies are riding to his rescue, spending millions of dollars in secret, undisclosed donations to promote a candidate who will put Wall Street profit ahead of middle class security,” said a press release from Ben LaBolt, spokesman for Obama for America

Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney group, shot back that Obama’s people were the ones engaging in underhanded campaign advertising. “It’s his outside group, Priorities USA, which is, to use his campaign words, ‘spending millions of dollars in secret, undisclosed donations…’ Restore Our Future is an FEC-registered PAC that fully discloses all of its donors.”